#story craft

[kimboo-york]

Unveiling the Secrets of Serialized Novels!

Delve into the heart of storytelling with a journey that spans millennia! Why have tales like those of Scheherazade endured through centuries, captivating audiences with their intricate webs of narrative?

My exploration takes you from ancient storytelling to today's web novels, unraveling the timeless appeal of serialized stories. Become an Unstoppable Storyteller is your gateway to understanding how serials have mesmerized audiences, using suspense, cliffhangers, and complex characters to weave stories that extend far beyond the constraints of traditional novels.

With detailed analyses and captivating examples, I illuminate the path for today's storytellers to craft their own unforgettable serials. Begin your journey into the heart of serialization and discover the art of creating stories that live on through the ages!!!

CHECK IT OUT!

[enchantingepics]

Story Prompt 74

Each person had their own level to navigate, their own demons to face. Yet, amidst the chaos, they all shared one truth: they were in this together.

On the corner of 8th and Elm, a worn-out diner stood, its neon sign flickering like a heartbeat. Inside, the aroma of coffee mingled with the scent of desperation. A waitress with tired eyes poured refills for the regulars, their stories etched in the lines of their faces.

At a booth in the corner, two strangers found themselves drawn together by the invisible thread of shared struggle. One, a weary artist with paint-stained hands, sought solace in his sketches. The other, a young woman with dreams as fragile as glass, juggled bills like promises she couldn't keep.

"You ever feel like you're just spinning your wheels?" the artist mused, swirling his coffee.

The woman nodded, her gaze fixed on the rain-streaked window. "Every damn day. Like no matter how hard I try, I can't catch a break."

Their words hung in the air, a symphony of echoes bouncing off the linoleum floor. In that moment, they weren't just strangers – they were kindred spirits, bound by the shared burden of existence.

[max-sheridan]

WriterHouse Writing Workshops

I’ll be at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia, this August teaching two special workshops on story development. We’re going to have fun experimenting with Kurt Vonnegut’s story shapes, plotting and writing some stories of our own, and reading great stuff like Raymond Carver’s Neighbors and Larry Brown’s Samaritans. If you’re in our neck of the woods in August, drop by. If not, look for a new run of Story Craft courses in Nicosia at Write CY’s new digs in Pallouriotissa starting Spring 2019. Hit the button to find out more. Register

[ancientroyalblood]

The Art of Foreshadowing: Hints That Keep Readers Hooked

In the intricate world of storytelling, where words are brushstrokes painting a vivid canvas, the concept of foreshadowing is like a hidden whisper, a promise of something extraordinary lying in wait. Foreshadowing is the literary art of dropping hints and clues, much like breadcrumbs leading deeper into the story’s forest. In this exploration, we unravel the craft of foreshadowing and how these…

[tygerland]

Artist Bisa Butler has been creating decorative quilts since 2001. Here - in her New Jersey studio - she examines one of her newest works,Young, Gifted and Black, based on a portrait by Black photographer, Roy Francis. (Photos 2023 by Celeste Sloman.)

[medeecine]

black women in horror 🖤

aaliyah as queen akasha | queen of the damned (2002)

angela bassett as marie laveau | american horror story coven (2013)

bianca lawson as kendra young | buffy the vampire slayer (1997)

brandy as karla wilson | i still know what you did last summer (1998)

betty gabriel as georgina | get out (2017)

jada pinkett smith as maureen evans | scream 2 (1997)

keke palmer as emerald | nope (2022)

kelly rowland as kia waterson | freddy vs. jason (2003)

lupita nyong'o as red | us (2019)

rachel true as rochelle | the craft (1996)

[pinespittinink]

my hot take is that if you want to write a book, you need to read books

[incomingalbatross]

Genuinely though the Final Problem is really well-done.

It's a death story in which Doyle's whole goal was to kill Holmes off, but he still did it with care and respect and attention to what the characters deserved. He didn't drop a bridge on him or get him shot by a random criminal just so he could go "HE'S DEAD, NOW GO AWAY." He actually successfully created a nemesis for Holmes within the scope of one short story—someone we can believe is a big enough threat that it justifies Holmes dying to stop him. Without ever even letting us meet the guy face-to-face! That's insane. But it works. Moriarty has an established place in pop culture as Holmes's nemesis because Doyle made us believe it, just within FINA. He made Holmes's death an accomplishment for Holmes, a crowning glory.

And he didn't phone in the rest of the story, either. It's filled with Holmes and Watson being themselves. We have Holmes telling the ins and outs of his fight with Moriarty, intelligent and self-possessed and full of a zest for life even as he repeats that he'd willingly give it up to take this guy down; we have Watson's loyalty and stubbornness that keeps him close to Holmes and the need to help others that ultimately lures him away. We get an incredibly dramatic site for Holmes's death that Watson spends entire paragraphs describing.

We also get Watson's grief in the narration, which—again—is not colored by the author's own decisions regarding Holmes. Doyle might be tired of him, but he knows Watson isn't! And so Watson's narration is wholly and sincerely a tribute to Holmes, and mourning for his death, because that is both what the fans want to hear and what Watson would want to write. It's just...honestly, this whole story is such a good example of how to kill off a beloved character, if you're really set on doing it.

[sunlit-mess]

Congrats on being on the radar!

insane

[blackexcellence]

The North Carolinian feminist, mother, and healer Omisade Burney-Scott, joined us to chat about menopause. As the creator and curator of Black Girls' Guide to Surviving Menopause, Omi shared insights about the change, her work, Love Craft Country, and she was sure to create a vibe.

Check out Omi's podcast Black Girls Guide to Surviving Menopause

Want to hear the WHOLE conversation? Watch the full interview HERE.

[spockandawe]

Here we go! I have some smaller books to share as well, but I've been absolutely VIBRATING with excitement to share a BIG one, and I'm going to indulge myself and post that today, then figure out words for the rest. Because I bound a new cnovel. Check it out, guys, I bound jwqs/clear and muddy loss of love :D

Let me indulge myself and backtrack a little! First, these are quarto books, so they're short. But I think these average a little under 500 pages each, and jwqs is a LONG book (my beloved), and this adds up to a total eleven inches of lesbians. More like twelve once they're in their cases. It's over a million characters in Chinese and I think the English translation comes in somewhere around 890k, it's HUGE

Making these books was SO FUN, I hadn't read jwqs and still haven't, and will probably read on my phone when I do. I don't have any exciting photos of the typesetting, but I knew this was an imperial succession story, and that made me nervous, those stories don't always click for me. Well, the process of typesetting and adding footnotes for this beast definitely confirmed that I'm going to have a good time with this thing when I have the time to read it, but there was also so much going on that only the vaguest of spoilers sank in. I went into an absolute FRENZY of typesetting, and after I printed, cut and folded it, well. That was one afternoon of sewing. You're looking at the reason I'm scrambling to make up a few hours of missed work, hahaha

After that, I needed cases. At the very beginning of march, I received a shipment of some FASCINATING bookcloth. It's called Duo, and it's made by layering a thin gauzy fabric of one color over paper of a different color. Depending on the combos, you get a really cool range of color-shifting effects. And they've gone out of production! But I was part of a group order to get some of the goods, and hadn't yet finished a new project. Reader, I went for it.

That purple and green is bananas!!!! It's so hard to photograph, this midnight picture of a few cases is one of my most successful attempts to capture the full range up close. Originally I'd been thinking of trying to evoke imperial gold, but I figured this was still the kind of drama and luxury suited the book, and also something something the hidden colors suited Qi Yan's character. I tied it back a little to the imperial gold with the endpapers, then titled them in silver foil, since the endpapers had silver in them.

But once the books were made, I felt like it wanted something... more. Something like a BOX!

And me, I chase novelty. A set this large would be tricky for anything clamshell, but a slipcase for all seven would leave books tipping all over if it was wide open, but putting walls between slots would be demanding in terms of precision and would risk similarly-sized books getting stuck in the wrong slots. Then I remembered learning about slipcases where you could put in a little insert to support the weight of the text block, and the concept SNAPPED into place.

Colors aren't going to photograph well at midnight, but I made the supports using the scraps and off-cuts from my endpapers, to tie it back into the bindings. The back of the case is lined in more of the duo, and the walls are lined with a faux leather bookcloth I like a lot, it feels buttery smooth and seemed like a good neutral material to tie the papers and bookcloth together. I listened to some of the DEEPEST layers from the nine-hour conspiracy theory iceberg video while I was working on this, haha, it was a TRIP.

And in the end, each of the supports is sized to comfortably sit in the smallest of the volumes, and evenly spaced, so I believe it will take the books in any order with no problems. It's easy to grab the books without having to cut notches into the walls to grab them from. And even though weight is less of an issue for quarto sizing, the books in here have their weight supported no matter what angle the box is at! I'm so, so pleased with how this concept worked out and definitely plan to do more with it in the future.

So there we are! Jing Wei Qing Shang! I had such a fabulous time with this project, and I'm so excited to get to share it with all of you. The story was fun to work with, the bindings and box were fun to make, and everything here came together just as well as I could possibly have hoped. I'm so proud of this, and incredibly, incredibly excited to show it to you!

[kimboo-york]

In my book Become an Unstoppable Storyteller, I trace the fascinating evolution of storytelling from its earliest oral traditions to the dynamic digital narratives of the modern era. Storytelling has always been an intrinsic part of human culture, with each era bringing its own innovations to how stories are told. Ancient bards captivated villages with epic tales of gods and heroes, while today's storytellers hook readers in with serialized novels published one chapter at a time online.

My book explores how the digital revolution has transformed storytelling, making it more accessible and interactive than ever before and teaches you how to leverage those skills in your storytelling. By examining the journey from ancient oral epics to webnovels, I examine the enduring power of long-running stories and their ability to connect us across time and space and break down ways writers can capture that magic for your own stories!

[enchantingepics]

Story Prompt 78

There lived a group of friends who always seemed to find themselves in the middle of mischief. They were known for their wild antics and their knack for bending the rules just enough to keep life interesting.

One sunny afternoon, as they lounged lazily by the riverbank, one of them spoke up, "You know what? I'm getting tired of playing it safe all the time. There's gotta be more to life than following all these boring rules."

Another friend nodded in agreement, lazily tossing a pebble into the water. "Yeah, I mean, what's the point of being young if we can't have a little fun, right?"

Their conversation sparked a rebellion of sorts among the group. They began to question the status quo and seek out new adventures, much to the dismay of the townsfolk who clung tightly to tradition.

One evening, they stumbled upon an old abandoned mansion on the outskirts of town. Despite the warnings to stay away, they couldn't resist the allure of exploring its mysterious halls.

As they ventured deeper into the mansion, their excitement grew. "This is amazing! Can you imagine what secrets this place holds?" one of them exclaimed, shining a flashlight into the darkness.

But their fun was short-lived when they heard a creaking noise coming from the staircase. "Uh-oh, sounds like someone else is here," whispered another, their heart racing with adrenaline.

Suddenly, a voice echoed through the halls, "Who dares to trespass in my home?" The friends froze, their eyes wide with fear as they realized they were not alone.

Before they could flee, a figure emerged from the shadows – an old man with a stern expression. "I have warned you youngsters time and time again to stay away from here. Now, you must face the consequences of your actions."

[nonbinary-octopus]

how hard do you think bookbinding is? Could I learn how to do it? How much equipment does it take?

[sopuu]

top ten creeper trickshots

[africanmorning]

*Knee of my pants tears*

Me: Clearly the only logical course of action is to create an embroidery pattern of Master Chief by hand on graph paper, cut up an old curtain, and use modified cross-stitch through two layers of fabric to put John Halo Himself on my otherwise crappy pair of jeans.

Bad photo of the pattern I made in case anyone else wants it (I might try to digitize it later, Idk):